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raising citizens of the world

I believe that raising citizens of the world begins at home. I am a black American woman and my husband is a white American man, and we both bring a myriad of cultural traditions to our children. Both my husband Jeff and I are wary of racial labels, since race is a social construction rather than a biological reality, but we also realize that our society places great importance on race and ethnicity. So, we do not shy away from discussions of race and color; instead, we deal with our sons’ questions in a straightforward way. All families are different, we tell them. All people are different. Sometimes we can see the differences and sometimes we can’t, but being different is a good thing – it’s what makes life interesting.

We also encourage our children to appreciate and value differences – in skin color (we have light pink, pink, light brown, medium brown and dark brown people in our family), in family makeup (one of my older son’s best friends has two moms) in interests (some people like sports while others prefer art or music), in abilities (we are all good at some things and not so good at others) and in traditions, to name a few. If our sons grow up to believe that differences are normal and, in fact, desirable, we believe they will be more compassionate and successful people, no matter what path they choose in life.

In our family, we celebrate different faiths (including Judaism, various denominations of Christianity, Islam, agnosticism), and we make a point to discuss traditions of different parts of America as well as those of other countries. Maps and globes have inspired our sons’ curiosity about that which is “foreign,” and they are lucky enough to have grandparents from the Midwest and Northeast who have traveled to many distant locations. Receiving a t-shirt from Guatemala, a toy train from Italy, a coloring book from Thailand or a postcard from South Africa helps our sons understand that the world is a vast and diverse place. When my husband and I traveled to Belize on a recent vacation, the boys peppered us with questions about the country for weeks afterward.

This interest in unfamiliar cultures will serve them well as they grow – they have already been to Barbados, where they watched monkeys play in our front yard, and they already recognize the Eiffel tower on sight – and some day, they’ll stop calling it the “France Tower,” maybe when they see it in person someday.